3 1 8 Allie Reed of Bloomberg Law has published a thought-provoking piece on the effect of legal challenges to offshore wind projects and the Justice Department's and developers' responses to those challenges.
Some of...more
Some of you may recall my earlier reports on Nantucket NIMBYs' efforts to deny local Chef Gabriel Frasca the opportunity to deliver fried food and soft ice cream to the Island's residents and visitors. These legal challenges...more
On March 5th, three Judges of the First Circuit Court of Appeals will hear from lawyers for residents of Nantucket who sued to stop the Vineyard Wind project, the first utility-scale offshore wind energy project in in the...more
Last week a DC Federal Judge vacated EPA's approval of the State of Florida's application to assume the Army Corps of Engineers' authority to issue “dredge and fill” permits under Section 404 of the Federal Clean Water Act....more
There was a lot to like about what Governor Healey had to say about our rapidly changing climate in her State of the Commonwealth speech Tuesday evening, especially about her expectation that Massachusetts will be the leader...more
Over two years ago I wrote about a lawsuit filed by a Connecticut-based solar farm developer with a summer home in Martha's Vineyard seeking to enjoin the Vineyard Wind project off the Massachusetts coast. This particular...more
Our climate emergency has spurred all kinds of innovation around alternatives to the combustion of fossil fuels to generate energy. Today's Boston Globe reports on two different streams of that innovation that couldn't be...more
Those of us on the east coast have heard that the Great Salt Lake has receded to the verge of a public health crisis, including because toxins in the sediment that have been underwater for millennia may soon may soon be...more
The dog days of summer are apparently seeing the end of NIMBY lawsuits brought by Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard residents; the former seeking to deny us fried clams and soft ice cream and the latter seeking to deny us...more
The Boston Globe reports that the cost of the critically important New England Clean Energy Connect project increased by over 50 percent to 1.5 billion dollars during the three years Avangrid, the project developer, battled...more
About a year and a half ago I wrote about one of the four lawsuits brought in an attempt to halt the Vineyard Wind project (see...more
The Wall Street Journal is reporting on the time it takes to permit an infrastructure project in these United States and what might be done about it. The average time it takes for National Environmental Policy Act review,...more
The Boston Globe reports that a Maine jury has now determined that the developer of the New England Clean Energy Connect project relied in good faith on Maine's prior approval of the project when it spent nearly a half...more
Inside EPA's Climate Extra is reporting that Senators on both sides of the aisle might try to make it easier to construct all that renewable energy and other infrastructure it already decided to buy when it passed the...more
Seems like just yesterday that the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled on New England Clean Energy Connect's challenge to the retroactive initiative petition that might have killed the project to get hydropower from Canada to...more
Yesterday the Nantucket Residents Against Turbines were in Federal Court arguing the merits of their last ditch effort to stop the Vineyard Wind project which has taken ten years to plan and permit. ACKRat's lawsuit is one of...more
I was surprised to see a former EPA official opining that identifying two of the hundreds of forever chemicals known collectively as PFAS as "hazardous substances" under Federal law would "increase legal liability". ...more
A Maine Trial Court Judge has denied New England Clean Energy Connect permission to complete its project to transmit Canadian hydropower to the United States saying that NECEC hadn't demonstrated that it will suffer...more
As millions in Florida face the wrath of our warming oceans in the guise of Hurricane Ian, Inside EPA is reporting that enough Democrats and Republicans opposed Senator Manchin's proposal to streamline the permitting of...more
As the climate crisis continues, we're now on the verge of meeting our energy needs through a combination of water, wind, and sun generated electricity. Sadly many Federal and State permits are needed to get that cleaner...more
Benjamin Storrow's story in E&E News on the challenges faced by the New England Clean Energy Connect project is worth a read. He reports that it would be the third largest supplier of electricity in New England. ...more
Law 360 reports that Brenda Mallory, the Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, was in the Senate yesterday telling members of the Committee on Environment and Public Works about the Biden Administration's...more
But the less good news is that New York's first offshore wind project has to deal with endless NIMBY challenges at all after doing the work necessary to obtain the many federal, state and local permits the project needs, all...more
Many of you already know that Massachusetts timely meeting its Greenhouse Gas reduction goals is entirely dependent on our ability to receive hydroelectricity generated in Canada, at least until other renewable energy is...more
News this morning that a Federal District Court Judge in Massachusetts has granted Vineyard Wind's motion to intervene in the two lawsuits brought by NIMBYs to block the Vineyard Wind project well off the coast of Nantucket. ...more